Thirty points off turnovers swallows Green Wave
A team at nearly full strength was a key in University of Houston’s 79-68 victory over Tulane Saturday night at Hofheinz Pavilion.
With a week off, a much healthier Cougar team got a stellar defensive effort to keep them in the fold, as they snapped a five game losing streak. With the win the Cougars bounced back from a tough overtime to Tulsa last weekend.
Houston shook off a slow start to rebound from the Green Wave’s 8-0 run to start the game.
“I really had them ready to play the first few minutes of the game,” said James Dickey UH Coach. Tulane can really shoot the basketball, they did a nice job. They don’t have a lot of size but they do a great job of spacing, penetrating, pitching and shooting threes. I can’t remember when we given up 14 threes, wouldn’t usually defend the three.”
The Cougars defense forced turnovers with points that followed,30 to be exact.
The Cougars (12-11, 3-6 C-USA) broke open a close game with a 9-0 run that gave them a 27-18 lead with 7:23 to go in the half. Just after, senior guard Zamal Nixon added five points when he was fouled on a fast break layup as he converted the shot, knock down the bonus free throw and followed that with a jumper from the right baseline to increase the Cougars lead, 32-18.
Tulane’s forward David Booker ended the drought with a layup with the Green Wave still down by 12 points.
The Cougars shot 54.8 percent in the first half.
Darian Thibodeaux and Maurice McNeil accounted for a baskets each to keep the pressure on Tulane while giving the Cougars a 37-20 lead. In the closing moments of the first half Tulane was able to trim the deficit to eight, 39-31 on a trey by Richard and a offensive rebound put back by Kendall Timmons going into halftime.
The Cougars opened the second half with an 8-1 run when McNeil, Brown and Nixon all scored layups widening the gap 49-32 with 17:42 to go. Tulane continued to battle back when Timmons found the rim on a reverse layup and Kris Richard added a 3-pointer from the top of the key.
“A lot of them we were out there defending the three and they hit some big shots,” said Coach Dickey of UH. We got off to a bad start. We did a lot of things good in the first half, we rebounded, we didn’t turn the ball over that much. I thought we got going, moving the ball, moved ourselves, we shared the ball really well.”
Kendrick Washington’s four point scoring spurt gave the Cougars a 15 point advantage, 55-40 with 10:52 to go. As it turned out, the Green wave could never sustain a run or stop the Cougars.
Five cougars finished in double figures led by Zamal Nixon’s 17 points, Maurice McNeil had 15 to go with 11 rebounds, Alandise Harris 16 points, Adam Brown and Kendrick Washington scored 10 points apiece.
The Cougars will face SMU on Wednesday at Hofheinz Pavilion, their last home game of the season.